


Amidinine

by Anonymous



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: (but they don't call it like that), Agender Character, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Aromantic, Aromantic Louis, Asexual Character, Genderfluid Character, Louis/Perrie friendship, Multi, Polyamory, Queerplatonic Relationships, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, also romantic relationships are mentioned and talked about but not shown, but honestly the idea of soulmate is not that important in the story since louis' the focus, harry wears punny shirts, same with sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-09-02 15:21:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8672494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Why would Louis want a soulmate? He's good with his life like it is, thankyouverymuch.





	1. -

**Author's Note:**

  * For [acelouis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/acelouis/gifts).



> Okay, before any of you starts reading this, I have to apologise because it's not betaed and I'm ESL, so you'll surely find mistakes in it. Problem is that I've been without internet for a bit, and organising everything with a beta in time was a bit difficult. As soon as I come back online I'll look for a beat, and in the meantime feel free to point out the mistakes you might find!
> 
> Title from Bombino's song, [Amidinine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRZ-ItjXQ9w). It means "my friend".

“You… it’s you!”

Louis looked horrified at the stranger in front of him; they were looking at his soulmark with sparkly eyes and a giant, smiling mouth. Louis usually covered his soulmark with a glove, but there were 40 degrees and he didn’t think he would have needed it. He was just trying to walk Fyodor for a bit so that he could go back home to get started on the second chapter of his PhD dissertation.

And instead of that he met the only person he didn’t want to meet _ever_ in his life. A tall, curly, long-haired someone with a tank top declaring proudly _GENDER IS OVER (if you want it)_.

The person in question was now pointing to their own soulmark, right over their clavicle, and looking impatiently at Louis. Which, huh.

Louis scratched nervously at the back of his head. His heart was beating fast, and he couldn’t calm his breath is he tried.

So he did the only good thing he could do in that moment.

He fled.

 

“You _fled_?!” Perrie was looking at him half shocked and half amused. “What do you mean, you fled? And what did they do?”

“Uh…” Louis shrugged, petting Fyodor distractedly. “I think they tried to follow me, but I was faster, they couldn’t get to me.”

His glove was back on his hand, and even if he didn’t feel safe anymore, now that he had been found, it still made him feel marginally better.

Perrie shook her head. “Only you, baby, only you.”

Louis sighed. “It’s just, you know, Pez. I really don’t want it.” And he didn’t know why, either. He just knew that the sole thought of someone doing to him what Perrie’s soulmate, Leigh-Anne, did to her made him shiver in disgust.

“I know baby. It’s not your fault.” Perrie was fantastic, even if he was being weird. And she always had a cup of tea and nice words to him.

Maybe they had forgone the tea because of the heat, but still.

“Thank you, Pez. I wouldn’t know what to do without you.”

“Probably you’d be forgetting to eat because of your dissertation,” Perrie said with a half-smile. “And with me as a Flatmatus Maximus you have half the chores and half the bills. Isn’t it great?”

“Almost as great as you not having to cook because I can do it,” Louis snorted. He buried his face in Fyodor’s neck, and the dog whined happily in response. “See? I get all my cuddles from Fyodor already. My soulmate can go fuck themselves.”

He heard Perrie’s laugh and smiled in the soft fur od Fyodor’s neck.

 

Louis hadn’t always felt he was the weird one. When he was in middle school, everybody stopped pretending the idea of soulmate was icky, and he started feeling more and more isolated from what his classmates were talking about. Not sex, that one was okay; he liked the idea of it, and he would have his fair share of experience later in life, but all this talk of soulmates and flowers and first meetings and chocolate on Valentine’s day made him genuinely sick.

He didn’t want to have a soulmate. He was fine with other people having one, but he _really_ didn’t want one. When he got his soulmark he cried, and he hadn’t wanted to meet them.

He just couldn’t see himself in a soulmate situation. He didn’t feel like half of something, he felt like a whole person that could function without his other half of sky or something—he had an amazing family and great friends. He didn’t need a soulmate.

He knew people didn’t understand him, not even Perrie. He didn’t particularily care about Perrie not understanding, because she was always understanding even if she couldn’t really understand, and that was all Louis hoped, honestly. But other people weren’t as nice as Perrie, and he had to endure every sort of comment when the fact that he didn’t want a soulmate came up.

Christ, it wasn’t like he was going around killing babies. Or kittens. Or babies _and_ kittens. He just didn’t want a fucking someone breathing on his neck telling him schmaltzy things and pretending everything was right when Louis would inevitably flip out and have a nervous breakdown.

And yet, _but aren’t you going to feel alone when Pez’ll go live with Leigh? Come on, everybody_ needs _a soulmate, it’s so weird that you don’t want one! You clearly don’t know what you want, having a soulmate is so beautiful, I like it so much. You should definitely try it before you say you don’t want anything! And what about a family?_

(Well, Louis wanted a big family, actually. Lots of kids and at least three dogs, maybe a house in the countryside and a small vegetable garden. If that didn’t come with a soulmate, he would’ve been so happy.)

So he mostly kept his head down and his soulmark hidden, and he let people assume he was a big believer in fate and that serendipity would run his course when his soulmate was near.

Granted, he didn’t expect serendipity to run his course when his soulmate was near, it wasn’t fair. But when had life ever been fair?

 

 _In_ Bodies That Matter _the term “queer” stands as a term of resistance to the process of assimilation to the symbolic order. Through “queer” Butler poses the question of whether there is any possibility of finding alternative symbolic forms that will accommodate those who have been excluded from full social recognition as agents._

Louis stared at the blinking cursor mocking him. He had _Bodies That Matter_ opened in his hand, as if the book had all the answers, but he was honestly just running on too little sleep, and he was just lucky Niall at the coffee shop knew him well enough to let him have his various dissertation crisis in peace, without sending him away if he forgot to order tea for too long.

He sighed. He really needed to get over the _Queer resistance_ section of his dissertation, but he literally had no other ideas if not Butler, and his advisor had told him he should at least try to find someone else.

In very truth, he didn’t even like Butler that much, not after what she wrote about gender identity in _Undoing Gender_. But she was one of the founder of queer theory, and she couldn’t be ignored.

_“Queer” is therefore the category which stands for otherness that can be expressed only in its own terms,_

Louis looked down at the book, then reached out for his cup of tea, only to find it empty. He sighed and closes the book, but before he could get up, a steaming cup of tea was put in front of him. And the hand wasn’t Niall’s.

His soulmate looked more bashful this time around, their eyes still sparkling but their demeanour less forward, almost timid. They were wearing a maroon shirt with _THIS IS A T rans_- _SHIRT_ written on it in graphic letters.

At least they had a funny personality, Louis guessed.

“Can I offer you a tea?”

Louis swallowed. He really wanted to say no, because if he said yes then his soulmate would think he was accepting them. But then again he didn’t really have more money for coffee, and he still had the last batch of paper to correct for his students tomorrow. So instead he asked: “How do you know what do I drink?”

His soulmate looked bashful at his words. “I, um. I asked the bartender what did you usually take, and then I took one of them.”

Louis nodded and took a sip, burning his tongue. His soulmate just stood there, awkwardly and pidgeon-toed, and louis took pity on them. “You can sit if you want, but I need to work on my dissertation. And then I have to grade papers.”

His soulmate nodded frantically, and took a seat in front of him. Louis reopened his book and saw them taking a laptop from their bag out of the corner of his eye. Well then.

_“Queer” is therefore the category which stands for otherness that can be expressed only in its own terms, not through submission to the universal symbolic order. In Butler’s work “queer” is not a utopian category that offers recourse to something outside of the symbolic order. I suggest that Butler seems to be too closely theoretically connected to poststructuralism to assume any idea of an outside to normativity or liberation from it. Nonetheless, according to Butler, “queer” can be a tool to challenge the symbolic system from within. In several of her texts she argues for an immanent critique. “Queer” might be a helpful term in developing a new normativity, a normativity that might be written for different forms of sexuality in their own terms._

 

His soulmate’s name was H. They were a biomedical engineer and they had just started working after graduation. They sat with Louis writing some report while he kept working on his dissertation (and he didn’t want to think about how the words were coming easily), and then, as soon as Louis took a break, they apologised profusely for their behaviour at the park, without asking for an explanation. They didn’t even look at the glove once, and they just seemed content to be in that situation.

Louis was a bit weirded out, but nonetheless it was surprisingly… nice. It was nice to spend the time with them, just like with one of his friends, and he didn’t have a problem with a relationship like this. He did have a problem with the relationship being something ickier, and he didn’t know what to do.

They did ask for his number when the coffee shop was closing, though. Louis supposed this couldn’t be avoided, but it still opened a pit of anxiety in his stomach and he couldn’t do anything about it.

Because even if rationally they were nice, and they didn’t initiate anything, and they seemed genuinely sorry for having scared Louis off, and they didn’t even ask why was that, the irrational fear that they could send one of those message that Perrie loved sighing over was daunting. He didn’t want that.

He just wanted a partner in crime, someone like Perrie with whom he could mess around and walk the dog. Someone who would see all the political films with him without complaining, someone who could do the rainbow road without looking at the screen, or someone who would be happy to stay up till 4AM with him to play Dishonoured. And maybe someone able to cook so he didn’t have to do it all the time—better cooking that leaving Perrie to it anyway, he didn’t want to be in Leigh’s place when they’d live together.

But he knew that most of the people didn’t want that. Or, well, they might want that, but they didn’t want _just_ that. They wanted serious rom-com watching ( _who_ could be serious during rom-com watching? Not Louis, that’s who), and candlelight dinners, and they wanted to be taken to the tunnel of love at the fair, and probably they would go into ecstasy over their Chattanooga choo choo love dedicating them a love song at the karaoke night.

Yuck, no thanks.

 

Fyodor was making a mess of himself trying to dig a hole in the ground. Louis would have gone and took him, because he didn’t have a garden and trying to wash the dog was a suicide, but. 35 degrees didn’t help his will to move. Better staying under the tree, there was shade, and he could read his book in peace. His dissertation wasn’t going to write itself.

_Discussing and critiquing the notion of universalism and the global gay, we need to be attuned to the dangers of collapsing the local and the distinctive into a globalizing discourse informed by a particular—_

“Hey, Louis.”

Louis raised his gaze. H was smiling uncertainly. Their tank top was black this time, and it stated they were an _AGENDER AVENGER_. Louis pursed his lips trying not to smile, but H’s smile grew, and he supposed he wasn’t successful.

“Hi, H.”

H sat down near him, crossing their legs and putting their hands behind them to enjoy the breeze. Louis thought they were beautiful like this, all slender lines going up till their chin. He wouldn’t be against having sex with them, but it just had to come with the icky stuff because soulmates. Right.

“Louis, can we talk a bit?”

Oh lord, here came the speech about… _love_ and about how they were soulmates, Louis was sure of it. His pulse skyrocketed and he brought his hand on his neck, trying to control his breathing. “Yes, tell me everything.”

He was gripping his book and he had to remember it was actually something he loaned from the library and he couldn’t really ruin it. It was a hardcover copy and it cost a ton. He didn’t have 100£ for buying a ruined book.

H’s smile turned a bit uncertain again, and they shook their head. “If you’re not comfortable with it we can just hang out, but I think it’s a talk that we must have.”

They were so careful. Louis smiled a bit and shrugged. He could be an adult. He _could_. “I am not comfortable with it, but we probably need to have a talk, yes.”

H had bunny teeth; they were cute. “You want to go first?”

Louis shook his head, trying to smile. “No, thanks. I prefer to listen.”

They nodded, biting their lip nervously. “Okay, this is fair.” Louis saw them pausing and taking a breath.  “I—might already have a romantic partner, and we’re very much in love and even if you’re my soulmate and I want to have a relationship with you of some kind, I also really don’t want to break up with them.”

And just like that, Louis’ world became a little brighter, and he couldn’t contain his smile. “Really? But this is perfect! I really don’t want to do soulmate-y stuff with anyone. I mean,” He eyed H nervously, “You seem a perfectly fine person, but I am really disgusted by flowers and rom-coms and all that jazz. Ew.”

H relaxed and smiled, and lowered themselves on their elbows. “So you’re aromantic?”

“I—what?”

H raised an eyebrow. “Dude. You’re writing a dissertation on the term queer as a political concept and you don’t know what aromanticism is?”

Louis was dumbfounded “I—no? The politicisation of queer is all a, um. All a quite old concept?”

H shook their head again. “Dude,” they said, but they were smiling. “Is that why you fled when we first met?”

Louis was sure his blush was creeping down his chest. He tried playing it cool but couldn’t. “Well…”

H snorted and immediately put a hand in front of their mouth. “Sorry, sorry, I’m not laughing about you. It’s just that we believed you hated me or something. And instead you’re aromantic. It’s cool.”

Louis put his hand on his cheeks, willing the blush to go down. “I don’t hate you. I just hate corny stuff.”

H snorted again. “Duly noted. And what about sex?”

“Sex is cool, I like sex.” Louis looked at Fyodor, who was running towards them with a stick in his mouth. “Also platonic cuddles. And videogames. And I am okay with people being romantic in front of me. Just not with me, please.”

He had just the time to put the book in his bag before Fyodor assaulted him with his dusty glory and his tongue, making him lie down on the grass. At least he saved the money, but he needed to do laundry when he got home.

“Well then, I’m sure you and Bill will like each other, then.” H smiling upside down, from Louis point of view. He smiled back at him.


	2. [Sort of] Epilogue: an asexual, an agender and an aromantic walk into a bar… Or, two years later.

“Come on, I’m going to be fucking late for class!” Louis flipped the bird at H laughing hysterically, and tried to cover the hickey with concealer. There was simply _no way_ he was going to use one of Bill’s scarves. No way.

“If you use the green one it’s better, because of the colour wheel.” Bill was sitting cross-legged on the stool they had in the bathroom, filing his nails. He was wearing his _TODAY IS A BOY DAY_ shirt, and had a vaguely mocking expression. “You sexual people are so weird.”

Green concealer was indeed doing a better job of covering his hickey. “H, you’re so dead. So dead.”

H was thrown into another fit of giggles by his words. “Oh, come on dude. You’re a university teacher, not a kindergarten one. It won’t matter.”

“Yeah, a bunch of horny people just out of their GCSEs. Surely it won’t matter, sib, keep telling yourself that.” His seminar started in fifty minutes, and he really didn’t have time for this shit. “Bill, I’m taking one of your scarves. I’m sorry.”

When he was on the door, he saw H waving their hand, clad in sweatpants and their _DOES THIS MAKE ME LOOK FLAT_ personalised binder. “Have a good seminar, dude. _Ti voglio bene_.”

He smiled despite himself. “Me too, but you’re still dead when I get back home, sib.”

 

Living with H and Bill was an adventure, but Louis wouldn’t have changed it for anything in the world. At the beginning of the year, Perrie had expressed her desire to finally move with Leigh, and H had said that since he and Bill were already friends and their house was big, he could just move in with them instead of looking for another flatmate. And well, Louis didn’t even have to think about it that much. He liked Bill as a friend, and he liked having H as a partner in crime. Plus, Bill could cook divinely, he wasn’t about to let that opportunity pass.

And, nine months later, he could say his life had never been better. He’d got his partner in crime and a great friend living with him, an active sex life, and also H and himself had great fun when mocking people believing they were romantic partners.

So yeah, he was still theoretically against the idea of soulmates and corny stuff, but also he could freely admit that the universe paired him with someone that couldn’t have been more right for him.

Thank God, after everything, all was well.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so, I hope you liked it! Some notes:  
> \- The dissertation Louis' writing is an actual published PhD thesis, _Queer as a political concept_. You can find it [here](https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/152620/queerasa.pdf?sequence=1) in its entirety.  
>  \- The books he reads are taken from its bibliography: _[Bodies That Matter](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/181549.Bodies_That_Matter)_ by Judith Butler, and _[The Globalization of Sexuality](https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/the-globalization-of-sexuality/book207456)_ by Jon Binnie.  
>  \- _Ti voglio bene_ is a strictly platonic way to say "I love you" in Italian; we don't say it in any case to romantic partners, so in my mind H and Louis did their research to find an endearment term he could be fine with in any situation.  
>  \- Fyodor was my late dog's name. I miss him dearly <3  
> \- Sib is the abbreviation of sibling. Sort of like bruh/bro, but gender neutral :D


End file.
